The best thing about film photography is its unpredictability. Outside of Instagram and Hipstamatic, you can’t plan the kinds of lens flares, weird colours and freakish accidental light leaks you get from an old roll of Fuji 200. It’s like magic. And that in mind, Joe Nigel Coleman is some magician.
I love these big, messy paintings by New York-based Japanese painter Emi Inoue. The colours in her work, the painting to the right in particular, remind me of Ken Done’s work in the ’90s (I swear I had a bedspread in those colours!). Most of her compositions are abstract, and some are busier than others. Really nice stuff.
Inoue and Whearty (below) are both part of upcoming exhibit ‘We Don’t Have All Night’, which is currently on Kickstarter looking for funds. If I didn’t live a million miles away I’d be looking forward to checking it out!
Anyone that’s looked through this blog will know I’m a sucker for big, bright colours, and Lauren Whearty’s paintings have them in spades. Her older pieces show otherwise ordinary backyard scenes, with shrubs, fences and areas of grass, but the way Whearty paints them in long, confident brushstrokes gives them a real life and depth. Through layering different paints, often pushing the term ‘complimentary colours’ to the very edge (in a good way), Whearty gives her paintings a depth that makes you want to get in and walk around yourself. Fantastic stuff.
Bloom
Beach House
Sub Pop, 2012
Usually, to say “more of the same” in regards to a record would hold negative connotations, but with Beach House that’s not the case. Each of their previous three albums has seen the Baltimore duo grow in confidence, resulting in increasingly complex and assured albums. Bloom is no different, though it’s not such a huge step from 2012′s Teen Dream. As dreamy (sorry, it’s the most appropriate word) and shimmery as ever, the songs are fully fleshed-out and Victoria Legrand’s vocals are superb – as I said, no surprises! If I had to make a criticism it would be that there isn’t one real knock-your-socks-off track, but it is still early days and I can see a track like New Year becoming this album’s Norway.
Key tracks: New Year, The Hours, On The Sea
These paintings just appeared in my Google Reader feed, courtesy of the fine folk at Fecal Face. They’re great. And they’re actually really, really huge. I’d love to see one up close.
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Liz Ainslie’s paintings have a really nice geometric sense to them, despite the rough brushstrokes that make them up. She has fantastic colour palette, and a terrific eye for shape, as seen in her Stick Lines series. Perhaps it’s just me, but they kind of look like three-dimensional spaces, with coloured walls at odd angles in light and shadow. Actually, no, it is just me. Good thing it’s so easy to appreciate Ainslie’s works as abstracts, experiments in form and colour, as they were intended.
I’ve only been rock climbing a few times, but each time I’ve found myself pondering the fact that someone’s job is to design and manufacture the strange, colourful little handles and footholds that are bolted to the walls. I think I’d like that job.
I’m really impressed by Jessica Hans’ photographs. Nice muted colours (courtesy of film photography, I assume), good subject matter … What more is there to say, it’s good stuff! This kind of thing makes me want to get out the old Olympus XA again.
One of my mates, who just so happens to run landscape architecture blog Native Rants, pointed me in the direction of this guy today. I’m glad he did – Bohl’s works are like casual visual experiments, testing out different techniques and colour combinations. Really nice stuff.
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There’s something really nice and robust about Jonah Wood’s paintings. They look like vector illustrations, yet they’re rendered in oils. His style to painting is kind of abstract – sharp-edged, flat panes of colour, crooked lines and wonky shapes. But his subject matter is what really makes it work – slapdash yet perfectly arranged compositions, firmly rooted in the real, everyday clutter of life: basketball cards, malnourished cactii and pampered pooches feature heavily.
A simple Google search turns up a plethora of amazing paintings! Read More
